The underground church movement in Iran is growing despite the Islamic regime's crackdown on Christians. Hundreds are being baptized in large ceremonies and people are praising Jesus for saving them from despair and suicide, according to Christian ministries working in the region. Elam Ministries reported earlier this week that more than 200 Iranians and Afghans were baptized in a large service just outside the Islamic Republic of Iran, with eight different Persian-speaking churches attending. The group said that 20 years ago, estimates put the number of believers in Iran at only 2,0005,000 people, but new statistics are saying there could...

The Good Book has been banished from rooms at a hotel operated by Arizona State University. The religious cleansing of the Thunderbird Executive Inn took place after the Freedom From Religion Foundation complained. It was a story first reported by Billy Hallowell of Deseret News. Providing Bibles to Inn guests sends the message that ASU endorses the religious texts, attorney Madeline Ziegler wrote to the university. The FFRF is a group of perpetually offended atheists and agnostic whack-a-doodles from Wisconsin. They are very unpleasant and very litigious people. State-run colleges have a constitutional obligation to remain neutral toward religion, Ziegler...

A group of pastors is suing Illinois over a law that bars therapists from trying to change a minors sexual orientation. The lawsuit filed Thursday in federal court seeks to exclude clergy from the ban that took effect Jan. 1. The lawsuit contends the prohibition shouldnt apply to clergy because it violates free speech and religious rights. Illinois is among five states with bans on so-called gay conversion therapy for youth under 18. Laws in California and New Jersey have withstood legal challenges, but an attorney for the pastors says the prohibitions in those states did not include clergy. Critics...

Catholic Cardinal Kurt Koch, who heads the Vaticans office for ecumenical relations, said that Christians have a mission to convert all non-Christian religions people, including Muslims, to Christianity, with the exception of those who follow Judaism because of its unique, familial relationship with Christianity: both religions have the same roots. For Muslims, he added, the Islamic tradition in terms of the Abrahamic religions is not the same. [ ] It is very clear that we can speak about three Abrahamic religions, but we cannot deny that the view of Abraham in the Jewish tradition and the Christian tradition and the Islamic...

Speranza points out another difficulty with the impact-origins theory. Large blocks of limestone sit within the boundaries of the Sirente "crater." Such limestone would not have survived an impact. So if Ormö's theory is correct, one must surmise that somebody set these giant chunks of rock in place since the crater formed. To Speranza, that just didn't make sense. Speranza and colleagues further argue that Ormö's radiocarbon dating gave one age for the main feature (placing it in the 4th or 5th century a.d.) and a completely different age for a nearby "crater" called C9, a date in the 3rd...

A metallic asteroid may have coincided with the fall of Rome, says Duncan Steel Thursday February 6, 2003 The Guardian In the early fifth century, rampaging Goths swept through Italy. Inviolate for 1,100 years, Rome was sacked by the hordes in 410 AD. St Augustine's apologia, the City of God, set the tone for Christians for the next 16 centuries. But the Rome of that era came close to suffering a far worse calamity. A small metallic asteroid descended from the sky, making a hypervelocity impact in an Apennine valley just 60 miles east of the city. This bus-sized lump...

It is a fact that Islam is growing rapidly in the West. In the U.S. alone the number of Muslims has risen dramatically, from about 10,000 in 1900 to 3 million or more in 1991 (some authorities say 4.5 million). Most of this growth is due to recent immigration and the high birth rate of Muslims (5 children per family on average), rather than to conversion. Still, the number of those who convert to Islam is significant. In the U.S., the majority are African-American (a third of all Muslims according to most authorities), but there have also been significant numbers...

Pope Francis has concluded his historic meeting with Patriach Kirill of Moscow and All Russia in Cuba this past week. Their Joint Declaration calls for Catholic and Russian Orthodox to stand together in support of persecuted Christians, and also to give a joint witness in favor of life and traditional marriage. There are many good things in this document, but paragraphs 24 and 25 in particular caught my attention vis-a-vis their implications for ecumenism. Here are the paragraphs in question: 24. Orthodox and Catholics are united not only by the shared Tradition of the Church of the first millennium, but...

When we think of religious persecution, the Middle East comes to mind. But the world's largest democracy? At this time last year, I urged BreakPoint listeners to pay close attention to the state of religious freedom around the world in 2015. I said that this most important of freedoms was in peril at home as well as abroad. Little has changed in the past twelve months. If anything, the state of religious freedom is even more precarious, as events in India amply demonstrate. Normally, when we think about the persecuted Church, what comes to mind are places like the Middle...

A Jewish group offering therapy for same-sex attraction will be ceasing operations in January as a result of a lawsuit filed against it in New Jersey. Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing, also called JONAH International, sent an email to supporters on New Year's Eve announcing the closure. "The N.J. court delivered its final judgement on Dec. 18, 2015. Under the order, JONAH must permanently cease operations, including providing referrals and operating its website and listserv,"read the email. "That means that our site, www.jonahweb.org, will no longer be available online after mid- January 2016, and neither of us will be...

Trust me, I know that it is hard to write accurate, easy-to-read articles about complicated Vatican theological documents. This is especially true when dealing with materials focusing on very nuanced issues that continue to cause behind-the-scenes debates among Catholics. It's even harder to write informative, catchy and, yes, accurate headlines for these kinds of stories. This brings me to a recent New York Times report that ran with this headline: "Vatican Says Catholics Should Not Try to Convert Jews." The problem with that headline is that it is simplistic to the point of being inaccurate -- that is, if the...

Video footage of Muslim missionaries preaching and converting Africans in the Christian-majority states of Malawi and Uganda, show the Islamic leaders teaching the people to "bear witness" that Allah is god, his messenger is Muhammed, and "Jesus is the slave of Allah and his Messenger." Many of the people repeating the Islamic instructions are young but there are also many middle-aged and older people and, in one case, an apparently former Christian teen who is ordered to tear a crucifix from around his neck and "bear witness" to Allah. ...

She worked for the Clinton administration, became a liberal pundit for the Daily Beast and a regular Democratic contributor to Fox News. On top of that, all her friends were agnostics or atheists. So when God pursued and won her reluctant heart, she was more surprised than anyone else. "If there was one thing in which I was completely secure, it was that I would never adhere to any religion-especially to evangelical Christianity, which I held in particular contempt," writes Kirsten Powers, in a first-person account of her conversion published in Christianity Today. The daughter of archeologist parents, she attended...

In Germany, hundreds of Muslim refugees are turning to Christ at a Berlin church. The Evangelical Trinity Church has swelled from 150 to 600 members in just two years, and many are Muslims fleeing Iran and Afghanistan. Mohammed Ali Zonoobi, an Iranian asylum seeker, was recently baptised. "I feel like I am born again", he sobbed. Many of the refugees are seeking asylum in Germany and converting to Christianity can increase their chances of staying. If they're sent home, converts can be persecuted -- even put to death -- for leaving Islam. The church's pastor said he believes the power...

* Iranian and Afghan asylum seekers are taking three-month crash courses * Converting allows them to claim they would face persecution if sent home * Germany is expecting around 800,000 migrants this year - a 300% increase __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Muslim migrants are converting to Christianity in their droves in the hope it will greatly improve their chances of winning asylum in Germany. Hundreds of mostly Iranian and Afghan asylum seekers have changed faiths at the evangelical Trinity Church in a leafy Berlin neighbourhood alone. Many claim true belief prompted the move, but the decision undoubtedly boosts their chances of being granted...

A Muslim flightattendant has filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEO) claiming she was suspended from her job for not serving alcohol  which is against her religious beliefs. Lena Masri, an attorney for the Council of American Islamic Relations Michigan (CAIR), says Charee Stanley followed managements directions, working out an arrangement with her coworkers to accommodate passenger requests for alcohol. However, Masri said, ExpressJet Airlines put Stanley on administrative leave after another attendant filed an Islamophobic complaint that referenced Stanleys head scarf. We notified ExpressJet Airlines of its obligation under the law to reasonably accommodate Ms. Stanleys religious beliefs, Masri said at a news conference in Farmington Hills...

Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. What made non-Muslims convert to Islam, leading to the creation of the Islamic world? Early historical sourcesboth Muslim and non-Muslimmake clear that the Islamic empire was forged by the sword; that people embraced Islam, not so much out of sincere faith, but for a myriad of reasonsfrom converting in order to enjoy the boons of being on the winning team to converting in order to evade the dooms of being on the losing team. Modern day Muslims and other apologistsprimarily in academia, government, and mainstream mediareject...

Republican presidential candidate and Texas Senator Ted Cruz reunited for the first time in decades with the pastor who baptized him and led his father to Jesus in the 1970s, during a campaign stop in Tennessee this week. For Cruz, he saw his stop through Murfreesboro on Monday to speak at a campaign rally as being more than just an opportunity to share his conservative views with potential voters. As Cruz took the stage to speak to the crowd, he had just one question for the audience. "I was told Pastor Gaylon Wiley was here. Is that right?" Cruz asked....

Nepal: HPI Note: This report is from a Christian website. Christians and Muslims in Nepal are criticizing the draft version of a new constitution that bans religious conversion. Spurred to action by the recent earthquake, Nepal's government introduced the draft for public comment on June 30, Reuters reported. The draft states that "any act which may be contrary to public health, public decency or morality or incitement to breach public peace or act to convert another person from one religion to another or any act or behavior to undermine or jeopardize the religion of each other is not allowed and...

Latinos are one of the fastest growing groups in the Muslim religion. The Pew Research Center says about six percent of American Muslims are Latino. And women make up a little more than half of the new converts -- the people who have changed their religion to Islam. On a recent Friday, men listened to their imam at Masjid Miami Gardens in Miami, Florida. This clergyman spoke about forgiveness. On the upper level of the Gardens, the women watch through glass. They hear the imam through a monitoring system. This is the world that Greisa Torres entered four years ago....

It has become a common occurrence over the years for Muslims in the Middle East who have converted to Christianity to claim to have been compelled to do so after dreaming of a person who they believe is Jesus Christ. Now, one militant belonging to the brutal Islamic State that has massacred Christians has converted to his victims' religion after dreaming of "a man in white" with a startling message, according to one missionary's account. "One of our YWAM workers in the Middle East was contacted by a friend earlier this year and they met up and he was introduced...

A woman who said she feared for her life after she converted from Islam to Christianity as an Ohio teenager has written a book through which she hopes to inspire girls and women who are desperate for freedom. Rifqa Bary, 22, gained national attention in 2009 when she ran away from her northeast Columbus home to Florida, saying her father had threatened to kill her. The book Hiding in the Light: Why I Risked Everything to Leave Islam and Follow Jesus tells her story. It was released on Tuesday by the WaterBrook Press division of Penguin Random House. Writing this...

. . . they only heard it said, He who once persecuted us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy. . . .  Galatians 1:23 Has Cuban president Raúl Castro, once described by a senior Vatican official as a man with a soul like a stone, had a Damascus Road experience like Saint Paul, such that hes now preaching the kind of politics he had long tried to destroy? Fidel Castros little brother and political heir was certainly suggesting as much, in remarks to the press after his May 10 visit at the Vatican with...

David Brooks shares a stage with pundits during a panel discussion, â2012: The Path to the Presidencyâ, at the University of Chicago on Thursday, Jan. 19, 2012. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)Dear David Brooks:We have never met, and I do not regularly follow your work. Because you are a public intellectual of Jewish origin, though, your spiritual peregrinations are of broader interest. It may be chutzpah for me to offer you advice, but I could not help thinking of the case of Franz Rosenzweig while reading a post at Aletaia claiming that you may convert to Christianity. Rosenzweig, one of the...

(LiveActionNews) â A pamphlet produced by Last Days MinistriesÂ entitled,Â ÂAbortion Clinics: An Inside LookÂÂ contained the testimonies of two former abortion facilityÂ workers.Â One worker who tells her story is Sam Griggs.Griggs talks first about the job interview. Some time ago, Planned Parenthood director turned pro-life activist Abby Johnson wrote about how abortion facilitiesÂ often tell prospective employees that they will not be assisting in abortions.Johnson said that since Âno one grows up wanting to work in an abortion clinicÂ abortion facilities often promise new employees that they will not deal with the abortion procedure, or the bodies of aborted babies. Johnson describes a...

[1]Water finds its own level. So did Joshua Van Haften [2], a pedophile and criminal who converted to Islam and joined ISIS [3]. An American man has been charged with trying to provide support for the Islamic State militant group, the U.S. Justice Department said on Thursday.Joshua Ray Van Haften, 34, of Madison, Wisconsin, intended to travel to Iraq or Syria to join the group, also known by the acronyms ISIL and ISIS, prosecutors said in a statement.He added: âI was about to cross to Syria âŚ but I didnât make it. Hopefully soon though. âŚ Iâm tired of...

Twenty years ago this month, I decided to become Catholic. At the time, it was a rather emotional decision, likely rooted in a bit of rebellionÂmy family background is Seventh-Day Adventist, which is historically anti-CatholicÂbut mostly born of a desire for a fresh start. Years later, I was happy to discover that my decision to become Catholic came right about the same time that John Paul II issued his pro-life encyclical Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life) in March 1995. The encyclicalâs affirmation of the value and dignity of every human life had special significance for me in reflection...

My wife is a big fan of Fr. Richard Heilman of Madison, WI. He is a regular diocesan priest who oversees several parishes but who has found the great beauty and rewards from the traditional practice of the Faith, and especially the Traditional Latin Mass. He relates in a recent post how his experience of tradition has made him a much better priest and has fired his external apostolate, reaching out to random souls encountered in the world and bringing them back to the Sacraments. Note, this return  nascent though it may be  is not through watering down...

Tony Blairs sister-in-law announced her conversion to Islam last weekend. Journalist Lauren Booth embraced the faith after what she describes as a holy experience in Iran. She is just one of a growing number of modern British career women to do so. Here, writer EVE AHMED, who was raised as a Muslim before rejecting the faith, explores the reasons why. Much of my childhood was spent trying to escape ­Islam. Born in London to an English mother and a ­Pakistani Muslim father, I was brought up to follow my fathers faith without question. But, privately, I hated it. The minute...

The Conversion of a Catholic Priest Vincent O'Shaughnessy From Dead Religion To New Life In Christ! As a very small boy I remember rolling out of bed to my knees each morning to say my prayers. We began with the Morning Offering, which my mother taught me, together with the Our Father and Hail Mary. I still remember the Morning Offering going like this: "Oh Jesus, through the most pure heart of Mary. . .etc." To me this meant that to get to Jesus I had to go through Mary. I had no other way to Jesus. I also have...

I grew up in a loving family who attended the Catholic Church regularly. Not just my immediate family, mind you(!) - but my entire family (aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, etc.) was Catholic! I was a regular participant and played the organ at church and also was a leader in the "folk choir" for most of my teenage years. In short - I was as "Catholic" as they come! I never doubted my faith because I was told to just believe everything the Church taught me without question. The Pope was supreme in his authority, and the priests and nuns were...

A pastor friend told me last week that he had church members enraged with him when he suggested from the pulpit that we ought to pray for the salvation of Islamic State terrorists. The people in his church told him that he ought to be calling for justice against them, given their brutal murder of Christians, not for mercy. I thought about my friend a few days ago when these murderous fiends beheaded 21 of our brothers and sisters in Christ because they refused to renounce the name of Jesus. I was not just angry; I was furious. Can such...

Mr Tawfiq said: "It's not that I went looking for Islam. Islam came looking for me. "I loved my former life and my work, but now I've found a peace that I never knew before." Mr Tawfiq explained that he made the decision to leave the priesthood when he realised how lonely he was. "I left my job, but not the Catholic religion," he said. "I had no intention of changing my faith. That wasn't part of the plan at all." "My Christian faith slid away slowly and Islam became more and more important. "I play down my Catholic priesthood,...

Its been formally acknowledged that U.S. NATO ally Turkey is providing safe haven to leaders of Hamas, a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) so designated by the U.S. State Department. By its very definition, an FTO should be considered declared enemy of the U.S. Despite this, Turkey doesnt appear to be paying any price. Another player in all this is the small nation of Qatar. It is desperately trying to play both sides of a political fence as leaders of Hamas  to include the terrorist organizations political leader Khaled Meshaal  has been forcibly relocated to Turkey. The reason these...

The Conversion We Think We Want Stephen BealeLetâs face it. Given a choice, most of us would choose to have the conversion experienced by St. Paul.Hereâs how Acts 22 describes the sudden conversion of the great apostle, which we celebrated on Sunday:On that journey as I drew near to Damascus, about noon a great light from the sky suddenly shone around me. I fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to me, âSaul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?â I replied, âWho are you, sir?â And he said to me, âI am Jesus the Nazorean whom you...

The head of India's most powerful Hindu group vowed to press ahead with a campaign to convert Muslims and Christians to Hinduism, stoking a sensitive debate that has stalled parliament and threatened the prime minister's economic reform agenda. Mohan Bhagwat of the right-wing Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, which is also the ideological wing of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's party, said India was a "Hindu nation" where many Hindus had been forcibly converted to other religions. "We will bring back those who have lost their way. They did not go on their own," Bhagwat said in a speech late on Saturday. "They...

JRR Tolkien in 1967 (Photo: PA) Books blog: Dr Holly Ordway's Not God's Type recounts a fascinating and uplifting journeyI have been reading Dr Holly OrdwayÂs Not GodÂs Type: an Atheist Academic Lays Down her Arms (Ignatius Press, or Gracewing in the UK). It is always uplifting to read books like this, not in a triumphalist way but because it is a reminder that underneath all the glaring human weaknesses in the Church as an institution, which we all know so well, there are still people out there who are searching for answers to fundamental questions and then finding...

Over the last few years, we've seen a dozen Western hostages convert to Islam in order to appease their captors, or in the hopes of getting better treatment. It never works, of course.Â The hostages are still beaten, or killed, regardless of their profession of faith. It would seem intuitive for Islamic State hostages to convert to Islam in order to win some modicum of mercy from captives who proclaim profoundÂ religiosity. But it clearly doesnât work, according toÂ accountsÂ and stories from Somalia to Syria. And why should it, since the Islamic State has proven itself willing to execute people of...

Church leader RT Kendall has said that he believes Yasser Arafat may have accepted Christ before his death a decade ago. November 11 marks ten years since the death of the PLO leader, regarded as a heroic freedom fighter by many Palestinians and a terrorist by many Israelis. The first time RT Kendall was granted rare access to Arafat,the Christian writer and speaker told him he had prayed for him every day for 20 years. According to Kendall, the 20-minute appointment turned into an hour and 45 minutes, and an unlikely friendship began. The third time Kendall visited Arafat, the...

The most common reason why people convert to Judaism today, I would guess, is because they want to marry a Jewish spouse. Such conversions are a sign of the amazing acceptance that Judaism enjoys in America, compared to the stigma it labored under for most of Western history. For a Christian to marry a Jew in medieval Europe meant stigmatization, isolation, perhaps even violence, as it does in many parts of the Muslim world today. For us, it is simply a personal choice, even a laudable demonstration of spousal loyalty. It was surprising to learn in this weeks Daf Yomi...

The altar call is an appeal in which the speaker invites attendees to come forward as a way of acknowledging their decision to follow Christ. Many consider Charles Finney (1792-1875) to be the founder of the altar call even though early Methodist used a similar approach known as the "mourners bench." I have had the privilege of working on the field at large stadium events where altar calls have been given, and I have also offered many appeals to come forward as well, primarily in the early years of my ministry. Let me begin by saying that anytime we give...

Kerala, India, Sep 11, 2014 / 05:03 pm (CNA).- A former Muslim imam who converted to Christianity believes that God protected him from death threats and torture at the hands of his family members. The holy Quran converted me to Christianity, said Mario Joseph, a former imam who shared the story of his conversion and subsequent persecution with the HM Television program Changing Tracks, broadcast by the EUK Mamie Foundation run by the Home of the Mother religious community. The English-language interview, first posted in April 2014, now has more than 250,000 views on YouTube. Mario Joseph grew up in...

Radical Islamists seem intent on conquest. It has always been so. From the beginning and down through the ages, radical jihadists have attempted to convert people to their religion by force. Convert they cry or we have nothing to offer you but the sword.

For much of the twentieth century, Catholics around the world prayed after every Low Mass for the conversion of Russia.Called the Leonine Prayers, originally they were conceived as a protection of the sovereignty of the Papal States, which were then under attack. This intention ended with the Lateran Treaty of 1929 but the prayers continued from that time for the conversion of Russia that had become an atheistic state bent on destroying religion.The prayers included 3 Ave Marias, a Salve Regina, a versicle and response, a prayer for the conversion of sinners and the Âexaltation of Holy Mother Church,Â...

The moment Duck Dynastys Phil Robertson said to Sean Hannity, that, with regard to ISIS, you have to either convert them or kill them, it was obvious that others would pounce on those words and claim that he was no better than ISIS. After all, havent these murderous terrorists done this very thing to the Christians and Yazidis, offering them conversion or death? How is Robertson any better? A headline in the UKs Daily Mail asked, Isnt it ironic, Phil Robertson? Duck Dynasty stars stance on ISIS is convert them or kill them as terror group wages bloody religious war...

Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson has a prescription for how to handle Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant militants: Convert them or kill them. Appearing on Fox News on Tuesday evening, the reality television personality quoted several verses from the Bible and asked why ISIL harbors hatred for the U.S. even as the military has increasingly withdrawn from the region. Host Sean Hannity argued that ISIL is at war with us and creates a significant threat to the U.S. and Israel, regardless of how the Obama administration or the American people view the group. You either have to convert...

Conversion of a Rocket Man: Charles P. Morse by Charles C. "Chas" Morse * God providentially used several key events to draw my father, Charles Phillips Morse, to salvation and into the ministry as a creation pioneer in the late 1960s when a six-day biblical creation was largely disbelieved. On May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy delivered a shocking speech before a special joint session of Congress describing his ambitious goal of sending Americans safely to the moon before the decades end. Little did Kennedy know that his space scheme was a cog in the Masters plan to relocate...

Let me begin this conclusion by ending at the beginning: My wife Cindy and I entered into full communion with the Catholic Church because we came to see that this Church is the Church established by Jesus Christ. We came to this realization in large measure by spending time in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, reading other positive presentations of Catholic teaching, and speaking with flesh and blood Catholics in all walks of life and vocations. The many misconceptions we had about what Catholics believed were cleared away as we dug deeply into the teaching resources of the Catholic...

The Wizard of Oz has fascinated adults and children for many years. You know the story: a farm girl from Kansas finds herself in the middle of an unwelcomed adventure in an attempt to find the fanciful wizard, who, she hopes, will help her return home. After many trials and tribulations, she, along with her newfound friends, ultimately arrives at the Emerald City only to discover, much to her chagrin, that the "wizard" was really no wizard at all. He wasn't much of anything. In modern parlance, he was a wimp. Believe it or not, many-a-Protestant claims to have experienced...